View from the bench | 'We will be thrilled 'to see you'

"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery."

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, 1849

In these hard times, senior judges have great expectations that everybody will pull together to make good use of our resources. Since the beginning of April, the county court has seen the introduction of reforms designed to save the public purse, which have the potential to stimulate thought and make us all think creatively: some outcomes are positive, some are less so - and by the end of the working day on 2 April I had already had a hearing that tested the application of the principle in the Children Act 1989 that orders should not be made unless necessary

Both parties were represented. The child, aged eight, divided his time equally between his parents' homes in blocks of three or four nights and a single night on a pattern they had reached without lawyers and without any order. The application was for contact after one parent failed to honour the agreement - described as failing to return the child after contact. A Cafcass report recommended no change to the routine the parties had reached. They both asked for a shared residence order.

Lack of enforceability

I was inclined to say no order was required, but was told that there was an issue about income and that my order might impact on the allocation of benefits. I asked who was receiving the child benefit - answer: the father, but he paid half of it (10.15 per week) to the mother. So? The real issue was the imminent reduction in housing benefit and council tax benefit. In summary, the parental incomes in this case were vastly different, although both received benefits, and were about to become worse. The mother, living alone with her son half of the time, receives job seekers allowance (JSA). After a deduction for heating made by her housing association, she has 32.40 to pay for food, clothes, school dinners and transport. The father, with a new partner and new baby and his son with him half of the time, who works and has tax credits, has 211 per week net of rent for two adults, a baby and his son.

The mother's income had been reduced by 18.75 because her son was not treated as living with her because she had no residence order and the father was receiving the child benefit. I had no power to make orders for periodical payments for children but it seemed to me that I should make a residence order in mother's favour to give her a chance of having tax credits. Father opposed any such suggestion - he has another child sharing his son's bedroom so he was not over accommodated, but his tax credit income depended on the child benefit.

Father was prepared to share some of his tax credits with mother - 21.90 per week, which he said was 25 per cent of the tax credits relating to this child. So I made a shared residence order with a preamble reflecting this agreement, trying to overlook the lack of enforceability and the distortion of the no order principle involved.

Overcoming hurdles

So how am I going to respond to the next big change? I don't mean the single family court. It is the other budget-driven change that is going to impact most harshly on our day-to-day work; the withdrawal of public funding from private law cases. I cannot simply appoint guardians in order to achieve legal help for the judge. Most parties won't have representation where there is no history of violence - privately paying parents come to hearings on their own in this court because they can't fund advocacy as well as advice.

Over the Christmas period, when solicitors were sensibly hibernating, I saw two urgent cases in which social services had advised different parents to come to court and they struggled to explain their (serious) concerns even with support and advice from a social worker. If I see two lawyers in a first appointment list nowadays I feel well off. That is likely to be more and more the case. So please bear with your local district judge as he or she greets you with enthusiasm, whatever the case - we will be thrilled to see you.

There is a proposal of a pro bono/volunteer duty solicitor scheme here in Swindon - if only the hurdles of insurance and conflict can be overcome.